In computer storage systems, logical volume management can be used to manage physical storage devices such as hard disk drives. Logical volume management provides a method of allocating space on mass-storage devices that is more flexible than conventional partitioning schemes. In particular, a storage administrator can concatenate, stripe together or otherwise combine regions (a region is a sequence of bytes having a specific length, typically one megabyte) into larger virtual regions that administrators can re-size or move, potentially without interrupting system use.
Storage systems may comprise multiple storage pools, wherein each of the storage pools comprises a distinct set of storage regions (also known as blocks and partitions) on the storage system that the storage administrator can combine in order to define a logical volume. In some configurations, storage pools can be differentiated by one or more services that they provide. Examples of the services provided by storage pools include, but are not limited to, encryption, compression, thick provisioning and thin provisioning.
The description above is presented as a general overview of related art in this field and should not be construed as an admission that any of the information it contains constitutes prior art against the present patent application.